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Psicologia em Estudo
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Psicol. estud. vol.15 no.4 Maringá Oct./Dec. 2010
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S141373722010000400002&script=sci_arttext
ARTIGOS
Is 'back to Vygotsky' enough? the legacy
of socio-historicocultural psychology
Voltar para Vygotsky é o suficiente? o legado da
psicologia sócio-histórico-cultural
Volverse a Vygotsky es suficiente? el legado de
la psicología socio histórico cultural
Mohamed ElhammoumiI
Doutor em Psicologia. Professor Associado no Departamento de
Psicologia da Escola de Ciências Sociais da Imam Muhammad
Ibn Saud Islamic University na Arábia Saudita
I
Endereço para correspondência
ABSTRACT
Is 'back to Vygotsky'enough? Vygotsky's psychology has its
roots in Marx's writings. Thus, Marxism is indispensable to the
study of Vygotsky's theory. That is why, we assert in this paper
that, back to Vygotsky is back to Marx and Marxism.
Furthermore any attempt to modify Vygotsky's uses of Marxism
with some extraneous element is not only objectively anti-
Vygotsky but also distortion of his theory. Vygotsky brought into
prominence the dialectic movement of social totalities, within
which a complex interaction takes place between forces of
production, social relations of production, means of production,
mode production, consciousness, alienation, and activity. In
these complex interactions that human mental life is formed and
shaped. Aware of these pitfalls, Vygotsky did not try to build a
Marxist psychology that lies on the side of the economic
determinism theory. Vygotsky's efforts were directed, instead,
to locating psychological aspects in Marx's writings and making
one of these aspects a new point of departure for examining the
same totality with which Marx was concerned.
Key words:Vygotsky; Marxist Psychology; Dialectical Method.
RESUMO
Voltar para Vygotsky é o suficiente? A psicologia de Vygotsky
tem suas raízes nos escritos de Marx. Assim, o marxismo é
indispensável para o estudo da teoria de Vygotsky. Por isso,
afirmamos neste trabalho que, ao voltar para Vygotsky também
volta-se para Marx e para o marxismo. Além disso, qualquer
tentativa de modificar o uso que Vygotsky fez das idéias do
marxismo com algum elemento estranho não é apenas
objetivamente anti-Vygotsky, mas também a distorção da sua
teoria. Vygotsky trouxe em destaque o movimento dialético das
totalidades sociais, dentro do qual uma complexa interação
ocorre entre as forças de produção, relações sociais de
produção, os meios de produção, modo de produção,
consciência, alienação e atividade. E é nessas interações
complexas que a vida mental humana é formada e moldada.
Ciente destas armadilhas, Vygotsky não tenta construir uma
psicologia marxista, que fica do lado da teoria do determinismo
econômico. Os esforços de Vygostsky foram dirigidos, em vez
disso, para a localização de aspectos psicológicos nos escritos
de Marx e fazer, de um desses aspectos, um novo ponto de
partida para a análise da mesma totalidade com a qual Marx
estava preocupado.
Palavras-chave:Vygotsky; Psicologia Marxista; Método
Dialético.
RESUMEN
Volver para Vygotsky es suficiente? La sicología de Vygotsky
tiene sus raíces en los escritos de Marx. Así, el marxismo es
indispensable para el estudio de la teoría de Vygotsky. Por eso,
afirmamos en este trabajo que, al volver para Vygotsky
también se vuelte para Marx y para el marxismo. Además,
cualquier intento de modificar el uso que Vygotsky hizo de las
ideas del marxismo con algún elemento raro no es sólo
objetivamente anti-Vygotsky, pero también la distorción de su
teoría. Vygotsky trajo en destaque el movimiento dialético de
las totalidades sociales, dentro del cual una compleja interación
ocurre entre las fuerzas de producción, relaciones sociales de
producción, los medios de producción, modo de producción,
consciencia, alienación y actividad. Y es en esas interacciones
complejas que la vida mental humana es formada y moldada.
Ciente de estas armadillas, Vygotsky no intenta construir una
sicología marxista, que se queda del lado de la teoría del
determinismo económico. Los esfuerzos de Vygostsky fueron
dirigidos, en vez de eso, para la localizacíon de aspectos
sicológicos en los escritos de Marx y hace, de uno de eses
aspectos, un nuevo punto de partida para el análisis de la
misma totalidad con la cual Marx estaba preocupado.
Palabras-clave: Vygotsky; Sicología Marxista; Método
Dialético.
"To be radical is to grasp things by the root. But for man the
root is man himself" (Marx, 1844, p. 52).
Contribution to the critique of Hegel's philosophy of right. In
Early writings (pp. 43-59). NY: McGraw-Hill, 1963.
La psychologie ne détient donc nullement le "secret" des faits
humains, simplement parce que ce "secret" n'est pas d'ordre
psychologique [Psychology by no means holds the "secret" of
human affairs, simply because this "secret" is not of a
psychological order]. Georges Politzer, 1929, p. 170
When, on June 10th 1934, Lev Semenovich Vygotsky died at the
age of thirty-seven Marxist psychology suffered the loss of a
great mind whose work opened new avenues in the field of
psychological science.
Beginning with Educational Psychology (1922-23), his thought
evolved through a number of stages finally to arrive at refined
theoretical conceptions (1927) which transcended the Marxism
dogmatism of the Second International in Soviet psychology.
Vygotsky was well engaged in the conceptualization of Marxist
psychology. He centered his energies upon the scientific study
of human higher mental functions to which he brought his
greatest and most lasting contribution: the discovery of the
specific character of cultural historical activity in the
development of human mental life. It is clear that Vygotsky was
not only a psychologist, but also the expounder of an
educational doctrine, an outstanding educator of individuals with
special needs (defectologist), and a socio-historicocultural
psychologist of the first rank.
In a long series of volumes (see the collected works in six
volumes) which appeared in the last two decades (in Russian,
English, Spanish, French, German, among other languages), Lev
Vygotsky opened a new world-view in psychological science, the
specific cultural historical character of human higher mental
functions. This was entirely unsuspected by the competing
schools of classical psychology and the so-called Marxist
psychology because they applied the categories of German
materialist physiology (Fechner and Helmholtz), British
empiricist philosophy, and French Cartesian dualism. These
competing schools (behaviorism, psychoanalysis, reflexology,
associationism, mentalism, etc.) were committed to the belief in
unilinear evolution and an unchangeable essence of human
mental nature. In contradistinction to these ideas, Vygotsky
firmly established the relativity of the categories of human
thought and the impossibility of reducing our rationale and our
elements of experience, to the rationale and elements of
experience of physical nature.
It is much too early for us to grasp the significance of Lev
Vygotsky's thought. His writings, of course, remain, as well as a
myriad of traces of his vision of psychological science. He was
the fearless opponent of dogmatism in the Marxist tradition
hoped, by way of a recovery of Marx's unwritten psychology, to
inaugurate a renewal of scientific psychology (Marxist
psychology). Above all, for Vygotsky, this meant that scientific
knowledge is won only after a long and difficult struggle –there
is no short cut to scientific knowledge-, by a transformative
theoretical practice. To be a Marxist psychologist is not a matter
of applying the concepts and principles bequeathed by Marx and
his disciples to psychology. Rather, it is a matter of both
recovering and developing a provisional, flawed and incomplete
legacy; of producing new concepts and analyses appropriate to
the investigation of human mental life.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATION OF
Vygotsky'S IDEAS
For Vygotsky, German materialist physiology (Fechner and
Helmholtz), British empiricist philosophy and French Cartesian
dualism represented the attempts of the greatest Western
thinkers to grasp the nature of human higher mental life. Their
categories and methods of thought gave the highest theoretical
expression to the contradictions of social relations of production
of their socially organized practical activity.
In this section, we will attempt to reconstruct the pertinent
theses of Vygotsky's work with a view to freeing them from the
dogmatic presentation of mainstream psychology. The first
concern is the emancipation of Vygotsky from the cognitivist
and semiotic heritage which has grown up around it under the
banner of "sociocultural or sociohistorical theory". The
emancipation of Vygotsky implies at the same time the
understanding of Marx (and Marxism) as emancipating. We
regard Vygotsky's research program as a self-reflection on
human potential that clears the way towards a defetishised and
emancipated social world.
Anyone trying to grasp the ideas of Lev Vygotsky--and today
that effort is needed more than ever--faces a number of
obstacles. Most serious is the after-effect of the distortions
which made up the tradition known as "organismic cultural
anthropology", "social constructionism", or "sociocultural
relativism", or, more accurately, "anthropological cognitivism
relativism". This was compounded by the writings of cognitive
psychologists and cultural anthropologists, whose widespread
influence in the 1960s and 1970s added significantly to the
mystification. As if these weren't enough, the fragmented
outlook known as "social constructivism", which so well
expresses the chaos and confusion of our own day psychological
science, has muddied the field still further.
Not so long ago, Vygotskian psychologists strove to give
theoretical expression to the Soviet School of cultural-historical
psychology but now they seem to have accommodated
themselves to the postmodern fashion. Postmodernism does
more than present a fuzzy picture of concrete reality: it denies
both reality and truth. For this denial, a special array of
concepts is needed.
We were not looking for an accommodation of Vygotsky's ideas
to mainstream psychology, but for a negative theory of
mainstream version of Vygotsky in which the human higher
mental functions would not be explained by the fragmentation
of 'scientific' discourse, but of the totality of human make-up.
In Marx's view
The totality of these relations of production constitutes the
economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which
arises a legal and political superstructure and to which
correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of
production of material life conditions the general process of
social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of
men that determines their existence, but their social existence
that determines their consciousness (Marx, 1971, pp. 8-9).
Similarly Vygotsky argued that "The first form of intellectual
activity is active, practical thinking. This thinking that is directed
toward reality. It is a basic form of adapting to new or changing
conditions in the external environment" (Vygotsky, 1987, p.
63).
In "Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior"
(1925) and "The problem of consciousness" (1933), Vygotsky
concluded that the Hegelian-Marxist dialectic shows that
knowledge of social and mental life is not a science (as a natural
science), but consciousness, and that implies the possibility of a
Marxist psychology. Vygotsky used Marx's dialectic in different
spheres of his thought. It is through dialectics that psychology
becomes human science. In this regard, Henri Wallon argued
that "It is dialectics that has given psychology its stability and
its meaning" (1951, p. 34). Dialectical materialism is "the most
rational explanation for psychology" (Wallon, 1954, p. 127).
Dialectical materialism "is relevant to the entire realm of
knowledge, as well as to the realm of action... psychology...
must, more than any other science, find in dialectical
materialism its normal base and guiding principles" (Wallon,
1951, p 34). These guiding principles have enabled psychology
to understand and comprehend human higher mental
phenomena and its environment that are in constant interaction,
as "a single unified whole" (Wallon, 1951, p. 34). Vygotsky
pointed out that "Dialectics covers nature, thinking, history - it
is the most general, maximally universal science. The theory of
the psychological materialism or dialectics of psychology is what
I called general psychology" (1997a/1927, p. 330). In other
words, dialectical methods are particularly suited to dealing with
conceptual and theoretical problems arising from such research
in psychological studies. The dialectical method is "always
genetic and, like every human reality, is both material and
psychic: the genetic study of a human fact implies in every case
and in the same degree its material history and the history of
the doctrines which concern it ... one of the basic theses of the
Marxist method is that any serious study of human reality leads
back to thought when its material aspect has been taken of the
point of departure and to social and economic reality when one
has begun with the history of ideas" (Goldmann, 1966, p. 62).
According to Goldmann human individual is a "living and
conscious being placed in a world filled with realities that are
economic, social, political, intellectual, religious and the like. He
sustains the whole effect of this world and reacts upon it in turn.
This is what we call a dialectical relations" (1966, p. 87).
Goldmann outlined three major structural elements of social life:
1) the specific importance of economic life, 2) the predominant
historical function of social classes, and 3) the existence of
potential consciousness. He argued that social class is defined
by 1) its function in production, 2) its relations with the
members of other classes, and 3) its potential consciousness
which is a world-view.
It is through creative and concrete application of dialectical
materialism that psychology can escape the ossification and the
orthodoxy that frequently grips it. It is a psychology in crisis
because it is drained from its dialectics and is ignored
consciousness.
In this perspective human mental functions are formed and
transformed by the real material life. Wallon, Politzer and
Vygotsky were similar in many ways; they wanted to promote
an essentially materialist psychology, embedded in actual social
structure, historical process and cultural development.
Vygotsky's socio-historicocultural theory is a set of extensions of
the writings of Marx and Engels. Delving into the hidden nature
of higher mental processes and consciousness, Vygotsky
analyzed the role of culture, history, material conditions, social
positions, social interaction, tools and signs in the development
of human thought processes and consciousness. Vygotsky was
impelled in this quest by dissatisfaction with his present-day
psychology: Western bourgeois psychology and the so-called
Soviet Marxist psychology, its aims and its methods.
WHY READ VYGOTSKY?
Why study Marxist psychology? Both Marx's writings and Marxist
psychology are dying disciplines. How many Marxist psychology
groups are there now? How many to create psychology's own
capital psychologists involved in this project? How many courses
on To create psychology's own capital are taught in universities
and debated in seminars? How many Vygotskian psychologists
are ploughing on their own through the German Ideology,
Grundrisse and Das Kapital?
I am associated with Vygotsky's approach usually known as
Marxist approach to psychology (or sometimes scientific
approach to psychology), which I have tried to work out in my
writings. My main concern in this approach has been to
understand human activity as socially organized practice, or, in
other words, to understand the categories of human mental life
as open categories, categories which conceptualize the
unpredetermined process of human development.
Vygotsky bases himself on the Theses on Feuerbach. In his
magnum opus, Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology
(1927) Vygotsky presented an interesting reflection on Marx's
monism, which throws light on the Marxist approach to
psychology. In this respect, Vygotsky's system is the highest
stage of Marxist approach to psychology. This account of
approach has met criticism, not least from Marxists (positivismscientism versions of Marxism) who wanted to study psychology
without committing themselves to a cultural, historical and
social scheme. Classical psychology took the acting individual
out of history and replaced him with cognitive processes.
Overtheorized present-day mainstream psychology takes
cognitive processes out of history and replaces them with
structures. Vygotsky finally noticed that human individuals are
not really historical subjects with a single consciousness. Human
individual is "not an organism in a social environment or
context, but a moment in a social totality, the ensemble of
social relations" (Shames, 1988, p. 131). Vygotsky argued that
social formation, mode of production, forces of productions, and
social relations were better concepts than gender, race, ethnic
groups, etc. This social formation (mode of production, forces of
production, relations of production, means of production)
consists of economically, politically, culturally and historically
forms within which reside the conditions of existence of the
relations of production. In Marx's method, these concepts (mode
of production, forces of production, relations of production,
mean of production) can only be understood in reference to
each other, and particularly in relation to human consciousness.
According to Marx, the derivation of these concepts from each
other makes possible the understanding of socio-historical
change.
Whenever we speak of production, then, what is meant is
always production at a definite stage of social development -production by social individuals. It might seem, therefore, that
in order to talk about production at all we must either pursue
the process of historic development through its different phases,
or declare beforehand that we are dealing with a specific historic
epoch such as e.g. modern bourgeois production, which is
indeed our particular theme. However, all epochs of production
have certain common traits, common characteristics. Production
in general is an abstraction, but a rational abstraction in so far
as it really brings out and fixes the common element and thus
saves us repetition. Still, this general category, this common
element sifted out by comparison, is itself segmented many
times over and splits into different determinations. Some
determinations belong to all epochs, others only to a few (Marx,
1973, p. 85).
Contemporary psychologists base their theories and research
practices on an individualistic philosophy as well as on individual
concepts of higher mental functioning. The part often played by
the survivals of concepts and trends inherited from earlier
generations of classical psychology and preserved only by
research tradition is discussed at length in Vygotsky's writings.
Furthermore, psychological theories draw their inspirations from
the zeitgeist of the socially organized nature of social relations
of production.
For Vygotsky, the Marxist concept of "social relations of
production" is the appropriate unit of analysis of human mental
life. Human higher mental functions, personality and
consciousness are an ensemble of social relations, mediated by
social relations, tools, and concrete social-cultural-historical
environment.
SOVIET PSYCHOLOGY: WHAT WENT WRONG?
In my view Soviet Marxism after Lenin's death is much more a
product of the Russian reaction to the West than a direct result
of Marxism itself. Vygotsky's analysis brings us to the center of
what Marxist psychology is all about. According to Vygotsky,
Soviet psychology of the 1920s was precisely a hybrid product
of local competing schools in Russia and the West
(psychoanalysis, behaviorism, Darwinism, and phenomenology).
These hybrid products have been presented and elaborated by
the leading Soviet psychologists under the banner of Pavlov's
materialist psychology, who was billed as a materialist and
revolutionary. Pavlov theoretical rigor commands admiration by
those who were looking for a short cut to build a Marxist
psychology.
What is Marxist psychology? At first glance, Vygotsky seems to
be pursuing a similar research question like his colleagues in
Soviet Union. Not surprisingly, perhaps, for a well erudite
Marxist intellectual, his answer is neither eclectic nor superficial
nor epithetic but principled – with respect to Marxism. In
Vygotsky's view
The entire complexity of the current situation in psychology,
where the most unexpected and paradoxical combinations are
possible, but also the danger of this epithet (incidentally, talking
about paradoxes: this very psychology contests Russian
reflexology's right to a theory of relativity). When the eclectic
and unprincipled, superficial and semi-scientific theory of
Jameson is called Marxist psychology, when also the majority of
the influential Gestalt psychologists regard themselves as
Marxists in their scientific work, then this name loses precision
with respect to "Marxism." I remember how extremely amazed I
was when I realized this during an informal conversation. I had
the following conversation with one of the most educated
psychologists: What kind of psychology do you have in Russia?
That you are Marxists does not yet tell what kind of
psychologists you are. Knowing of Freud's popularity in Russia, I
at first thought of the Adlerians. After all, these are also
Marxists. But you have a totally different psychology. We are
also social-democrats and Marxists, but at the same time we are
Darwinists and followers of Copernicus as well (Vygotsky,
1997a/1927, p. 341).
Vygotsky pointed out that human individuals are the result of
historical, cultural and social development rather than the
starting point of our explanation. For Vygotsky, human higher
mental functioning does not lie ossified in the inheritance past,
it is still to be created in our future development (human
individuals are full of potentialities, see Vygotsky's zone of
proximal development). Psychologists have only tried to
understand the make-up of human mind, while the point is to
change it. But the human mind cannot be understood until it is
changed.
THE IMPACT OF MARXISM ON VYGOTSKY
In philosophy, there was the period of Descartes and Locke,
then the period of Kant and Hegel, and since then there has
been the period of Marx and Engels. In psychology, there was
the period of Helmholtz and Fechner, William James and
Skinner, then the period of Jean Piaget, and then since the mid1970s there has been the period of Lev Vygotsky. If Piaget drew
his inspiration from Kant, Vygotsky drew his inspiration from
Marx. Marx's ideas are salient and of notable significance in
Vygotsky's theory. The discovery of Vygotsky is that, socially
organized practical activity is the true foundation on which
higher mental functions are organized. Vygotsky's
understanding of Marxist psychology involves five assertions:
 Psychology remains within the concepts of historical
materialism and class struggle, which means the rejection of all
non-materialist and non-Marxist theories;
 Psychological individual means that the subject study of
psychology is the concrete human individual formed and shaped
by specific social relations;
 Materialism, which means that, human mental life and rulegoverned behavior are derived, formed, and shaped by the
material conditions of social reality;
 Dialectics, which means that everything, is in flux; nothing is
unchangeable or constant;
 Activity, which means that a human individual acts to change
concrete reality and in so doing changes him or herself.
The concept of activity occupied central role in Marx's theory.
Marx explains
Even when I am active scientifically, etc. — an activity, which I
can seldom perform in direct association with others — then my
activity is social, because I perform it as a man. It is only the
material of my activity given to me as a social product – such as
the language itself which the thinker uses- which is given to me
a social product. My own existence is a social activity, and
therefore what I myself produce, I produce for society and with
the consciousness of acting as a social being [translation slightly
altered] (Marx, 1963/1844, pp. 157-158).
At this point in our inquiry of a Marxist approach to psychology,
we can conclude the following. Just as Marxism begins with
dialectical materialism as a socio-historicocultural analysis of
human development, it also begins with dialectical materialism
as a theory of cognitive processes, as a means of obtaining
knowledge. Similarly, just as Vygotsky's higher mental
functioning theory of human development is materialist, so
his—what perhaps can be called here—"socio-historicocultural
development of human higher mental functioning" is also
materialist. In the connection of this issue, Georgy Lukács
concluded that
Historical materialism eclipses all the methods that went before
it, on the one hand, inasmuch as it conceives reality as a whole
consistently as a historical process, and on the other hand,
inasmuch as it is in a position to understand the starting point of
knowledge at any one time. Knowledge itself is understood to be
just as much a product of the objective process of history
(Lukács, 2000, p. 105).
Vygotsky tried to renew Marxist thought in psychology; in so
doing, he modeled himself on Marx. That is, he analyzed the
transformation of Soviet socialist society after 1917, as Marx
analyzed the capitalist societies of the nineteenth century.
How Vygotsky did approach the crisis of psychology? The
following passage will shed light on how Vygotsky's turned
psychology on its head. He stated that,
We do not want to deny our past. We do not suffer from
megalomania by thinking that history begins with us. We do not
want a brand-new and trivial name from history. We want a
name covered by the dust of centuries. We regard this as our
historical right, as an indication of our historical role, our claim
to realize psychology as a science. We must view ourselves in
connection with and in relation to the past ... That is why we
accept the name of our science with all its age-old delusions as
a vivid reminder of our victory over these errors, as the fighting
scars of wounds, as a vivid testimony of the truth which
develops in the incredibly complicated struggle with falsehood
(Vygotsky, 1997a/1927, pp. 336-337).
In the crisis of psychology, Vygotsky turned his attention to
Marxism. While he devoted much space to the competition
between schools of psychology, he succeeded to formulate the
conceptualizations of a scientific psychology or Marxist
psychology. He thought that the competition had unveiled the
final crisis of individualistic psychology that based its theoretical
space on private internal sphere, independent of the material
world. He noted that problem with the competing schools that
dominate the field of psychology in the 1920s -and present day
psychology also- is that psychologists succeeded to remove the
human from psychology.
HUMAN INDIVIDUAL IS FULL OF UNDEVELOPED
POTENTIAL
Lev Vygotsky, the founder of Marxist psychology in mid-1920,
recognized that human potentialities display many features that
are not adaptations and do not promote the nature of social
organization directly. This is because: (a) human higher mental
functions have capacities beyond what they were selected for by
the nature of social relations of productions and the distribution
of socially organized activities; and (b) because human higher
mental functions are integrated systems in which an adaptive
change in one part can lead to a non-adaptive change of some
other feature.
Marxist psychology thus embodies the dialectical category,
actual development versus potential development. In other
words, human individuals are full of potentialities but these
potentialities are shaped by the nature of social relations of
production. The full development of human potentialities is
achieved only when individuals recognize each other mutually.
As long as the distribution of human cognition is predetermined
by the socially organized social classes, this recognition is
practically impossible. In my view, Marxist theory of
intersubjectivity is capable of creating a fully developed human
being, transformed into an achieved human nature and
humanity. Consciousness is, thereby, a reflection of concrete
reality. As Marx put it:
For Hegel, the process of thinking … is the creator of the real
world...With me the reverse is true: the ideal is nothing but the
material world reflected in the mind of man and translated into
forms of thought (Marx, 1977, p. 102).
Human higher mental functions go through a real historical
cultural and social development.
WHY PSYCHOLOGISTS ARE ATTRACTED TO
VYGOTSKY?
Just as Vygotsky was one of the first Soviet psychologists to
recognize the importance of Marx's writings for creating a
scientific psychology (Marxist psychology), so Vygotsky was one
of the first Soviet psychologists to be appreciated in North and
West European, and North American universities. But for the
North and West European, and North American psychologists, as
for the rest of the world (Elhammoumi, 1997, 2001), Vygotsky
has meant very different things in different times: in the 1960s,
Vygotsky was understood as the leading psychologist of a
cognitive revolution in psychology. His ideas were absorbed in
the wave of testing and measurement psychology. In the 1970s,
Vygotsky was understood as an exponent of a cognitive cultural
anthropology that was viewed firstly as a combination of
cognitive psychology and cultural anthropology with the
concepts of linearity of time and relativity of cognitive
development, and viewed secondly, as a pioneer of Marxist
psychology (Sève, 1975; Zazzo, Fraisse, Piaget, & Galifret,
1971; Caveing, 1969; Fraisse, 1977; Mecacci, 1979). In the
period of the 1980s, psychology in the Soviet Union in the
Vygotskian vein continued to focus on editing and circulating of
many of Vygotsky's early works concentrating on education,
epistemology, defectology, etc. The 1980s could be
characterized as a period of collected archives and manuscripts
of Vygotsky. The 1990s could be characterized as a decade of
explosive application, interpretations and extensions of
Vygotsky's theory (Elhammoumi, 1997, 2001).
With the editing and translation of Vygotsky's collected works
into English, Spanish, French, German, etc., a new appreciation
of Vygotsky's immense receptivity and curiosity began to
dominate the world psychology. But under the weight of
thousands of pages (six volumes of Collected Works,
Educational Psychology, Psychology of Art, and scattered articles
in different journals), Vygotsky intellectual achievements divided
into dozens of specialized studies in the field of psychological
science (special education, child cultural development, speech
development, semiotic, mediation, signs, tools, memory, zone
of proximal development, cultural-historical theory, activity
theory, higher mental development, spontaneous and scientific
concepts, inner speech, stages of cognitive development,
theoretical foundations of psychology, etc.). In my view
Vygotsky can be characterized as systematic psychologist, for
whom nothing makes sense except in the light of everything
else. It has become clear that the new trend in Vygotsky studies
is the recovery of Vygotsky as a systematic psychologist. In this
paper I have shown the image of a Vygotsky who is not a great
rejecter but a great absorber of the ideas of his day, whither
literary critics, aesthetic, philosophic, scientific, psychological,
sociological, anthropological, linguistics, medical, physiological,
or political.
What makes a treatment of any subject truly Vygotskian? In my
view it is the use of that special array of Marxist concepts that
goes under the heading of "historical and dialectical
materialism".
Vygotsky repeated and justified this perhaps too well known
phrase many times: psychology needs its own capital. This
phrase deserves, on one hand, to be taken seriously, and, on
the other hand, to be subjected to a critical reflection in order to
place it within the context of Vygotsky's psychology. One will
notice first that Vygotsky has purposely chosen a new term for
psychological studies, scientific psychology or Marxist
psychology, which did not belong to the vocabulary of classical
psychology. In this respect, the conceptual matrix of the
Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology gives us the
possibility, the tools, and the rigorous means to verify the
validity and content of each concept in use within the scientific
psychology (Marxist psychology) corpus.
When Vygotsky declared in his magnum opus, the historical
meaning of the crisis in psychology, that within 5 or 10 years
Soviet psychology would catch up with the advanced disciplines
such as philosophy, sociology, and anthropology, it meant that
in the space of one decade Soviet psychology had achieved
what took French psychology, American psychology and British
psychology over 50 years of struggle to establish psychology as
an independent scientific discipline. When Vygotsky and his
colleagues built their theoretical panoply, they had to start from
numerous scattered passages of Marx in which he comments on
the nature of psychological science and on general questions of
psychological methodology. There are also several places in
which Marx compares his own historical, economic and political
studies with the kind of research carried out by social scientists
of human mental development. Vygotsky and his colleagues did
not start from tabula rasa base, but they were in constant
interaction with the classical schools of Russian psychology and
world psychology.
Vygotsky'S CONCEPT OF SOCIAL RELATIONS OF
PRODUCTION
Society does not consist merely of individuals but expresses the
sum of a series of enduring relations. Marx distinguished
between three aspects of social organizations. They are:
 First, the "material forces of production", or the actual
method by which people produce their livings;
 second, the "relations of production" that arise out of them
and that include property relations and rights;
 and third, the "legal and political" superstructures and the
ideas, or "forms of social consciousness", that correspond to the
first two (Marx, preface to the contribution to the critique of
political economy, 1971/1859).
Marx argued that in the social production of their means of
existence human individuals
 enter into definite … relations of production which correspond
to a definite stage of development of their material productive
forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes
the economic structure of society, the real foundation… . The
mode of production of material life conditions the social, political
and intellectual life process in general. (Marx, preface to the
contribution to the critique of political economy, 1971/1859).
The concept of social relations of production occupied a central
role in Vygotsky's theory. He argued that 'the mental nature of
man represents the totality of social relations internalized and
made into functions of the individual and forms of his
structure… we see in this thesis the most complete expression
of everything to which our history of cultural development leads'
(Vygotsky, 1997c, p. 106). It is through this concept that
Vygotsky conceptualized his cultural historical theory. According
to Vygotsky (1994, p. 176).
The entire psychological makeup of individuals can be seen to
depend directly on the development of technology, the degree
of development of the production forces and on the structure of
that social group to which the individual belongs .
It is here that Vygotsky integrated in a dialectical way his
historical-cultural-psychosocial studies, and appeared as the
first well-defined socio-historicocultural theory in scientific
psychology (Marxist psychology). Vygotsky's vision of
psychology was totally opposed to that of his contemporary, and
he had a poor opinion of Freud as a man of psychological
science. Marx was the pioneer of scientific psychology, alongside
three others: Henri Wallon, with his conception of psychology as
a science of human individuals in act and action; Georges
Politzer, with his investigation of psychology as a science of
concrete mental reality, conflict and drama (Vygotsky argued
that 'Psychology must be developed in the concepts of drama,
not in the concepts of processes' (Vygotsky, 1989, p. 71); and
finally Vygotsky himself, with his study of 'the formation and
appearance of economic activity, which underlies all historical
development'(Vygotsky, 1997b, p. 211). The fundamental
causes of all social, mental and behavioral changes 'must be
sought not in people's mind … but in changes in the means of
production and distribution. … Thus, in mankind the production
process assumes the broadest possible social character, [which]
… encompasses the entire world. Accordingly, there arise the
most complex forms of organization of human behavior'
(Vygotsky, 1997b, p. 211). Vygotsky drew heavily on Marx's
theory that the forces of production and social relations of
production, means of production, and the conflict between
them, on which the class struggle is the most obvious
manifestation to penetrate the complex structure and formation
of human higher mental functioning. Human behavior is a
'dialectical and complex process of struggle between man and
the world, and within man' ( Vygotsky, 1997b, p. 53).
Engels wrote in 1874 in the preface to his book The peasant war
in Germany that there are three forms of class struggle: First,
class struggle in the economic front, second in the political
front, and third in the theoretical front. When class struggle is
fought in the theoretical field it is called philosophy. From my
reading of Vygotsky's writings, I learned that he carried out the
class struggle in the field of psychology and education. Class
struggle was reflected in his articles, books, and speeches that
deal with educational practice, pedagogy, pedology, defectology,
mental illness, cognitive education in school (i.e., zone of
proximal development), and psychotherapy. Vygotsky did
exactly what Lenin noted in his famous speech that reviewed
the achievement of the five years of the Russian revolution. He
stated that the most important thing for comrades to do is to sit
down and study. He placed greater emphasis on the need to
continue the class struggle and he characterized socialism as
the continuation of class struggle in a new form. In this vein
Vygotsky argued that
The concepts of the social category of class and class struggle,
for instance, are revealed in their purest form in the analysis of
the capitalist system, but these same concepts are the key to all
pre-capitalist societal formations, although in every case we
meet with different classes there, a different form of struggle, a
particular developmental stage of this category. But those
details which distinguish the historical uniqueness of different
epochs from capitalist forms not only are not lost, but, on the
contrary, can only be studied when we approach them with the
categories and concepts acquired in the analysis of the other,
higher formation (Vygotsky, 1997a, p. 235).
Vygotsky's psychology is very much closer to Marx, Wallon and
Politzer than to Mead, Dewey, and Piaget, whose cultural
historical theory contradicts the individualistic worldview of
Western psychology. He rejected its philosophical foundations
for neglecting social conflict and emphasizing on general
abstraction. What Vygotsky provides here is a well-defined
theory of how human higher mental functioning forms in the
process of cultural development.
FOR A VYGOTSKIAN UNDERSTANDING OF THE
NATURE OF HUMAN HIGHER MENTAL
FUNCTIONING
What is the nature of human higher mental functioning? It
seems to me that this is what is fundamentally at issue in
considering the relationship of cultural historical theory and
Marx's theory. The great merit of the former is that it offers us a
deeper understanding of the cultural development of human
higher mental functioning. It is not a substitute for Marx's
theory, and indeed it was grounded inside the framework of the
Marxist world-view. Cultural historical psychology can easily
become a path to social constructionism, social constructivism,
socioculturalism, cultural anthropological relativism, and
semiotic. In that sense, cultural historical theory has a similar
type of relationship to Marx's theory as Darwinism does. Darwin
made a great contribution to materialism, which, in antagonistic
classes based society, tends to get perverted by ideological
distortions. Just as Piagetian psychology needed to be rescued
from cognitivism, Marxim needed to be rescued from Stalinism,
Darwinism needed to be rescued from the social Darwinists, so
Vygotskian psychology needed to be rescued from
socioculturalism. As I noted (Elhammoumi, 2001, 2006),
important efforts were made by a number of Marxist
psychologists in this passing century (Henri Wallon, Gerorges
Politzer, Lev Vygotsky, Alex Leontiev, Alexander Luria, Lucien
Sève, René Zazzo, among others). Their works deserve to be
revived, developed and expanded as part of the overall struggle
for a renewal of a scientific psychology or Marxist psychology in
the psychological science.
The study of the nature and genesis of "human higher mental
functioning," however, seems to require a multidisciplinary
philosophical view. This philosophical view of human individual
and his higher mental functioning is grounded in a given social
organization. Marx, of course, famously rejected Feuerbach's
abstract concept of "human individual" and defined the "human
individual essence" as "the ensemble of the social
relations."(Marx, 1998, p. 573). But as brilliant as this insight
was, Vygotsky certainly didn't consider it the final word on the
subject of human mental life and rule-governed behavior. In
Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology (1927), he argued
against the trends of his present-day psychology and the narrow
view of human higher mental functioning, stating that
"Genetically social relations, real relations between people,
underlie all higher functions and their relationships." (Vygotsky,
1989, p. 58).
Just as Marx and Engels discovered the basis of cultural
evolution, Darwin discovered the basis of biological evolution, so
Vygotsky discovered the cultural evolution of human higher
mental functioning. According to Vygotsky, the essential
defining characteristic of human individual is his/her ability to
labor with the use of and development of tools. These tools are
means of production, which are used by the forces of
production. These forces of production create necessary social
relations of production. It is the dynamic of social relations of
these interconnected factors that is the real source of all
cultural, historical, social and mental development. It is these
interconnected factors that form the base that is the real source
of human's social consciousness. The contradiction between the
social relations of production and the productive forces underlie
all human mental make-up. This contradiction is the source of
human conflict, and the driving force for social and psychological
development. It is the development of the forces of production
and the social relations that are the integral part that play a
central role in creating a new principle which enables every
individual to reach his/her rightful potential. And that bring us
back to what Vygotsky himself considered to be a learning
process. Vygotsky's approach to learning (dis) abilities started
from the potential of the (dis) abled child (or individual) rather
than from his/her (dis) ability. Human abilities can reach its
potential only in a society based on each according to his/her
needs.
VYGOTSKY: THE FEUERBACH OF MARXIST
PSYCHOLOGY
For the last eight decades since 1920 Marxist psychology has
not achieved its goals. Most of its leading psychologists such as
Lev Vygotsky, Georges Politzer, Henri Wallon, Alexis Leontiev,
Alexander Luria, Serge Rubenstein, René Zazzo, Klaus
Holzkamp, Lucien Sève, among others operated within the
categories of the pre-Marxist research program. In other words,
Marxist psychology, at its present form, operates at the level of
Feuerbach, not yet Marx. Three stages were identified in the
evolution of a Marxist psychology. The first stage (rebellion)
which can be characterized to some extent to that of the left
young Hegelians (Wilhem Reich, Alexander Luria, Alexis
Leontiev, Georges Politzer, Henri Wallon, René Zazzo, Lucien
Sève, Klaus Holzkamp, among others); the second stage can be
characterized to that of Feuerbach's pre-Marxist categories (Lev
Vygotsky), and the third stage is Marx's radical categories. In
my view, Marxist psychology has not been able to move from
the Feuerbachian categories to Marxist categories. In this critical
review, I focus on Marxist psychologists and their theoretical
inspirations. Since the 1920s, Marxist psychologists presented
their concepts and ideas "in a much more artful form and
confused by the use of a 'new' terminology, so that these
thoughts may be taken by naïve people for "'recent philosophy"
(Lenin, 1908/1972, p. 20). Freudo-Marxism, Pavlov-Marxism,
Soviet Psychology, Frankfurt School, Berlin Critical Psychology,
Western Marxist Psychology, and other forms of Materialist
Psychology have been taken by naïve radical psychologists for
truly a Marxist psychology.
As Marxism controlled the social organization in the Soviet Union
to a great extent, the early goal of the Marxist psychologists
was to establish a psychological model following Marxist
philosophy. They part from the assumption that; changing the
social relations of production that govern the patterns of society
can change human nature. This theoretical framework led
Vygotsky to emphasize the role of various social relations (social
relations of production, social interaction, cooperation,
collaboration, etc.) in individual development. He developed the
concept of the zone of proximal development in which the axis
individual-society is dialectically constituted. The chicken egg
dilemma of priority of the individual or the society has been
solved according to the following formula: in potentiality, the
human individual is prior; in actuality, society as an expression
of social relations is prior. This bring us to the Marxist argument
that human individuals are full of undeveloped potential and
that can only be released after the structural reorganization of
the social relations of production of the entire social organization
of the society. In other words, human potential can be fully
developed only in a society in which the social relations of
production is regulated by the formula, each according to
his/her needs.
SOVIET AND WESTERN MARXIST
PSYCHOLOGISTS: ARE THEY MARXIST OR
YOUNG HEGELIANS?
In the mid-1920s Lev Vygotsky formed the Troika, a group of
"young" Marxist psychologists who gathered at Moscow
University in the turbulent years of the rise of Stalinism from
1925 to 1934. The central figures were Lev Vygotsky, Alexander
Luria and Alexis Leontiev. Many others were attracted to their
ideas.
The Troika was an intellectual group of psychologists whose
common theme was the ongoing application of Marx's dialectical
method and philosophical conclusions to the study of human
higher mental life. Their views of psychology were radical and
critical of the competing schools within Soviet psychology.
Vygotsky's initial formation was as a member of the radical
'young Marxist' school of social criticism which emerged in
Russia after the revolution of 1905, which contributed to the
ferment of ideas leading to the revolution of October 1917.
Initially influenced by Marx, his earliest writings were devoted to
the critique of art, literary critics and philosophy from a radical
humanist perspective. However, he soon came to appreciate
Marx's ideas that human consciousness, rule-governed
behavior, and activity have their roots in material conditions and
socially organized practical activity. Henri Wallon and Georges
Politzer were reaching similar conclusions as a result of their
experiences with psychology in France (Wallon's dialectical
psychology (1925), and Politzer's concrete psychology (1928)).
Vygotsky collaborated in a number of works attacking his
contemporaries who drew their theoretical inspirations from
Pavlov's physiology, Freud's psychoanalysis, Darwin's natural
selection, behaviorism, hermeneutic, Hegel's idealism, and
positivism-scientism for their idealism. From this emerged the
'cultural-historical theory of human higher mental functions', the
theory which, Vygotsky says, served as the guiding thread for
his psychological studies throughout the remainder of his life.
Vygotsky and his colleagues made an important contribution
toward a Marxist psychology, but their efforts were at the level
of Feuerbach, not yet Marx (Shames, 1984, 1988, 1990,
Elhammoumi, 2001). Vygotsky and his colleagues (Lenotiev,
Luria among others) were similar to the young left Hegelians
who tried to put an end to Hegel's idealistic philosophy. The
same ambition attracted Vygotsky and his colleagues to put an
end to the idealistic schools of psychology that dominated
psychology and brought it to a deep crisis. In his critical review
of Hegelian philosophy Vygotsky pointed out that
When Hegel strives to subordinate the unique activity of man to
the category of logic -- arguing that this activity is the
"conclusion", that the subject (man) plays the role of a
"component" of the logical "figure" "conclusion" -- this is not
only stretching the point, it is a game. There is a profound
points there, a purely materialistic one. We must reverse it:
man's practical activity must bring the repetition of various
logical figures a billion times in order for these figures to
become axioms... And further: 'Man's practice, repeated a billion
times, anchors the figures of logic in his consciousness' (1987,
p. 88).
And he added that
What is man? [Human being] for Hegel, he is a logical subject.
For Pavlov, it is soma, an organism. For us, man [human being]
is social person = an aggregate of social relations, embodied in
an individual (psychological functions built according to social
structure) (1989, p. 66).
Vygotsky suggested, correctly in my view, that what drew Marx
to Hegel was apparently Hegel's ability to anchor the realm of
human freedom in the vicissitudes of human history.
In this respect, Vygotsky is the Feuerbach of Marxist
psychology. According to Vygotsky
L. Feuerbach's wonderful phrase might be taken as the motto to
the study of development in abnormal children: "That, which is
impossible for one, is possible for two." Let us add: That which
is impossible on the level of individual development becomes
possible on the level of social development. (1993, p. 218).
It was Feuerbach who prepared the road to Marx and the
conceptualization of Marxist philosophy. In his article Critique of
the Hegelian Dialectic, Marx viewed Feuerbach as "the only one
who has a serious, critical attitude to the Hegelian dialectic" and
credited him for having "laid the foundation of genuine
materialism and real science" (Marx, 1844/1963, p. 197). If
Vygotsky is the Feuerbach of Marxist psychology, who will be
the Marx of Marxist psychology? In my view, Marxist psychology
is in need of its own Marx, a Marx who will rework and rebuild
on the Feuerbach (Vygotsky) of Marxist psychology. In
conclusion, Soviet psychology and Western materialist
psychology have produced the Feuerbach of psychology (in this
case Vygotsky), but not yet the Marx of psychology.
CONCLUSION
Vygotsky, whose premature death at the age of thirty-seven in
1934 was a serious loss to Marxist psychology. He will be
remembered for three things. Firstly, he played a major part in
reviving the Marxist approach to psychology which had been
suppressed by the positivism-scientism versions of Marxism.
Secondly, in his major works, Vygotsky made a positive and
original application of Marx's method, which in Marx's works
often suffered from vulgar dialectical materialism. Thirdly,
Vygotsky is the Feuerbach of psychology, but not yet the Marx
of psychology.
Vygotsky had read many texts by Marx and on Marxism. His
ideas were grounded in a philosophy that was both dialectical
and materialist. Doubtless, he did possess the necessary
philosophical, political, literary, economic, history and culture to
bring to a successful conclusion the extremely complex and
difficult task he had set himself. This task was to create
psychology's own Das Kapital.
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Endereço para correspondência
Mohamed Elhammoumi. 120 Browning Lane, Rocky Mount, NC
27804 USA.
E-mail: [email protected]